Soon I'll be racing again at last

I did a gym session Friday morning, and rode my bike a bit in the afternoon.  The chiropractor had told me my arm would probably continue to be sore after the massage she did, and she was right.

The Gorge downwind race is now less than three weeks away--it'll be Thursday or Friday or Saturday, the 14th or 15th or 16th of July.  Downwind paddling involves a lot of short, hard sprinting, and you have to be ready to sprint at the drop of a hat, whenever the conditions in front of you present you with an opportunity.  It's hard for me to train ideally for such a thing, living as I do in a mostly non-downwind environment.  But I do the best I can with a lot of hard sprinting with short rest.  That's what I did yesterday: a workout where I paddled 10 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 20 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 30 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy, 40 strokes hard, 10 strokes easy... all the way up to 100 strokes hard.  I definitely spend some time in "The Pain Cave" during this workout, especially once I'm up over 50 strokes hard.  Once I was finished I paddled easy for a few minutes, then did the workout again, only this time I went up to just 50 strokes hard.  I tried to push the intensity a little harder, and I was pleased with how my body responded after that first round of the workout.

The summer heat is slowly but surely becoming a bit more oppressive after seeming not so bad all last week.  Yesterday's high of 101 degrees Fahrenheit was apparently a record for the date.  When I went back to the river this morning the temperature was rising quickly through the 80s, and as I did some stretching on the dock I could feel more mugginess in the air than we'd had lately.  I went out and paddled for 70 minutes, going mostly steady but throwing in a little surge here and there to break the monotony.  Most of the time I do whatever I feel like doing during these "non-workout" paddles: if my body is in bad need of recovery, I paddle easy, but since I'm a four-times-a-week paddler I usually get enough recovery on my days out of the boat, meaning that I can push the pace on days like today if I feel so inclined.

In any case, I'm feeling encouraged after a pretty good training week.  Down on the Gulf Coast I was feeling tired and sluggish in the boat, but I've felt more pep in my step since then.  Maybe it's because the Gorge race is finally within sight: some part of my subconscious might be signaling to my body that it's time to get ready to go.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.